Exhibition of the week: Fiona Rae
A Jackson Pollock for the digital age, a painter of bits of visual information who reinvents the brush mark – Fiona Rae is all that. In a generation when original painting has been in short supply, she has mapped out an abstract course that is both personal and evocative of our world, our times. I find the abundance of her paintings satisfying while their fictional nature – the way her gestures are not impulses but the rephrasing of impulses – is very much an image of contemporary culture. This is painting as remix. And it is beautiful.
• Leeds Art Gallery from 11 May until 26 August 2012
Other exhibitions this week
Signs, Symbols and Secrets: an Illustrated Guide to Alchemy
Wacky images from an age when art and science were one.
Science Museum, London, until 27 April 2013
Marcin Maciejowski
Observational paintings of modern life.
Wilkinson, London until 17 June 2012
James Gillray
The great cartoonist and surreal visionary of the Napoleonic age.
Nottingham Contemporary until 1 July 2012
Lucian Freud
If you have not yet seen this genuinely important survey of a great artist it really is worth trying to catch it in the last few weeks. No hype here. This is the real thing.
National Portrait Gallery, London, until 27 May
Masterpiece of the week
The Parthenon Sculptures
There seems little chance of the Elgin marbles – to give these marble reliefs and statues their more infamous name – returning to Greece any time soon, so perhaps we can settle down, leave controversy behind, and look at them as art. Go to the British Museum and look at centaurs fighting their human enemies in some of these staggering sculptures. The power of human and animal anatomy, the realism and passion are awe-inspiring. The same goes for the dreamlike beauty of the Gods of Olympus and the grandeur of an Athenian parade. This is one of the greatest bodies of art in the world.
• British Museum, London
Image of the week
What we've learned this week
What the world's most expensive artworks sold at auction are
That New York is warming up to Frieze art fair
Who made the Turner prize 2012 shortlist
That Alex Katz is about to bring his big colours and bold visions to Tate St Ives
That $3.8bn and counting may be the cost of Freedom
